When colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

Colin, please note that there is a question for you at the end of this posting.

Hugh Farey had observed:

My own view is that it is not God’s normal practice to produce miracles which tell lies.

And that got me thinking and searching for more insight around that wisdom.

“The idea of an All-Perfect Being lying involves a logical contradiction, just like the idea of a square circle,” wrote Jimmy Akin in Why God Can’t Lie (Or Sin) two years ago in the National Catholic Register.

God, we may believe is omnipotent but that does not mean he can lie and at the same time be perfect, Akin had argued, just as he cannot create a four-sided triangle or make Colorless green ideas sleep furiously,

Hugh was talking about the Resurrection and the notion from some that the miracle would have changed the radiocarbon date of the shroud. Part of this idea, it was thought, was that some forensic detritus, telltale isotopes, would have been left behind. Hugh thus said:

… Hedges’ point was that unless there was some reason to suppose these indicative isotopes were there, there was no point in wasting time and effort (and money?) looking for them. The reason “a miracle might have resulted in such isotopes” is not sufficient. Nobody goes prospecting for gold in a mountain range on the basis of an irrational belief.

Of course, you (and for that matter Bob Rucker and Mark Antonacci) may be right, and the miracle of the resurrection did produce exactly the results you suggest, but until some expert in miracles can persuade the custodians of the Shroud that it’s worthwhile looking for them, they are unlikely to bother. My own view is that it is not God’s normal practice to produce miracles which tell lies, such that if the apparent medieval age of the Shroud is produced by a miracle, it is more likely to be thanks to a deceptive power than an honest one.

I recall a discussion from 2013. Mark Antonacci was then petitioning for a chance to look for indicative isotopes. At that time Colin Berry suggested a problem with that:

. . . All someone has to do is sneak a mixture of ordinary beryllium and americium-241 (present in domestic smoke alarms) into the cabinet housing the Shroud. That mixture then emits neutrons (half life approx.10 days) and before you know what the Shroud will then be impregnated with radioisotopes such as chlorine-36 and calcium- 41 that Antonacci and his pressure group (if invited in with their scanners) could later proclaim to the world as proof that the Christian story based on Resurrection is proven – and a lot more besides (he reckons, see below ) as to the mechanism of resurrection.

What was the “and a lot more besides”? Scarey stuff! Mark Antonacci had written:

A leading hypothesis published in Scientific Research and Essays in 2012 asserts that partic

le radiation was emitted from the length and width of Jesus’ dead body while he was wrapped in the Shroud, and it was this “event” which caused the unique images on the cloth. Molecular and atomic testing could prove that hypothesis to be true. ……

…..If unfakableand independent evidence was obtained to confirm this hypothesis however, it could actually be used to analyze the central premises of various religions throughout history and in our world today. (emphasis is mine)

David Goulet was quick to comment on Colin Berry’s problem back in 2013:

Would the sabotage you are mentioning lead to ‘unfakable’ evidence? If there is a way to skew the evidence then doesn’t this demonstrate the evidence is indeed fakable? And now that skeptics like yourself are aware of the possibility of sabotage, this would undermine authenticity claims based on said testing.

For myself, I share your fear. There is a segment of Christianity that pushes a Christian triumphalism and the Shroud could be be exploited by them. The thought that Christians would use the Shroud to proselytize turns my stomach. It has been called the Silent Witness…that is exactly how it should be seen. If God wanted it to preach he would have added audio to it.

Hmmm, that makes me wonder… could there be audio properties encoded in it? Who needs flowers and coins when you could have music and soundbites. :)

This whole nuttiness of trying to prove the resurrection is troubling. Paulette had commented:

Suppose Antonacci’s tests show what he expects. Suddenly it will be the skeptics who will scream about contamination and conspiracies. And I might need to agree with them. But not to worry. It is not going to happen.

And Louis wrote:

As commented more than once on this blog:

a) If the TS is ever “proved” to be a fake it will not demolish Christianity

b) If it can be “proved” in some way or the other that it demonstrates the Resurrection, there will still be many more questions to answer.

One more thing, and since I am not a scientist I may not be asking this in the right way: Colin, are chlorine-36 and calcium- 41 the isotopes created by resurrection events? Don’t we want to make sure that what isotopes might be found on the shroud are not the result it being stored near a source of naturally occurring radiation?

Like this:

Related

Yes, there’s definitely more to our MarkA than initially meets the eye, Dan. The notion of there being an embryoinc Christian Supremacy Tendency claiming to trump all other world religions evolving Stateside and perhaps elsewhere is one I hadn’t cottoned until MarkA came along with his call for isotope analysis on the Turin Linen. As for the idea that the same Linen could be deployed as the cutting edge for that bid for supremacy, words fail me… I don’t recall so much of a hint of it appearing in that 2000 book of his…

As for the science, then our Grand Proselytizer is on relatively safe ground, given that both natural environmentally-abundant chlorine and calcium atoms are capable of neutron capture to become chlorine-36 and calcium-41 respectively. The process occurs naturally, mediated either by cosmic radiation or previously by atom-bomb testing in the atmosphere. What’s more, both the resulting new and slightly heavier isotopes (easily detectable by mass spectrometry )are amazingly stable, with incredibly long half lives.

MarkA is not my favourite sindonologist by the way. I did a lengthy analysis of his pro-authenticity arguments some years ago, dropping him an email (which went unacknowledged). Then, just a few weeks ago, he was one of 9 (including Dan) who I tipped off regarding my querying of PCW-confined body image as per 2010 SSG Fanti et al review. Again, not so much as an acknowledgement.

It’s said that Manners Maketh man. Manners are seemingly dispensable if one’s Christianity’s Superman it would seem… Does he have a big red S emblazoned on a skin-tight tunic, yellow and blue background… Do little red items appear on his washing line?

PS: Oh, and while I hesitate to mention it, Dan, your accompanying graphic simply does not do the business, not if you’re the Almighty projecting divine images onto man-made linen. Oh no!

Look at Antonacci’s ORTHOGONAL projection of radiation on the left, (up v down, never sideways, least of all spewing out diagonally in all directions as shown in your graphic on the right.

“Supernatural”?

Nope. better described as superdupernatural, given that radiation-mediated selfie models of Antonacci and others require energetic linen-imprinting radiation (whether uv or streams of sub-atomic particles) capable of aligning body and image exclusively up v down with GRAVITY (despite being the weakest force in the Universe).

Remember – the body image is front and back, no sides…But it’s not a simple body contact-only imprint you realize, as the radiationists assure us.

Oh no, let’s not waste a second entertaining such a dumb idea, one that risks opening up the debate to all kinds of silly notions (like, er, medieval simulation of an, er, contact-body imprint). …

Hugh Farey

March 23, 2019 at 9:29 am

As I understand Mark Antonacci’s hypothesis, the resurrecting Jesus emitted (at least) two kinds of sub-atomic radiation, namely neutrons and protons. The neutrons radiated as seen in Dan’s graphic, in all directions, affecting areas of cloth not in contact with the body, and even the sudarium of Oviedo lying on a shelf a little way away. The protons radiated only vertically upwards and downwards, as shown in the Della Rovere illustration, causing the image. For all I know there were positrons which only went sideways and neutrinos which spiralled out like wiggly-fireworks, miraculously having no effect whatever.

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Is the Shroud Real? Possibly.

The Shroud of Turin may be the real burial cloth of Jesus. The carbon dating, once seemingly proving it was a medieval fake, is now widely thought of as suspect and meaningless. Even the famous Atheist Richard Dawkins admits it is controversial. Christopher Ramsey, the director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Laboratory, thinks more testing is needed. So do many other scientists and archeologists. This is because there are significant scientific and non-religious reasons to doubt the validity of the tests. Chemical analysis, all nicely peer-reviewed in scientific journals and subsequently confirmed by numerous chemists, shows that samples tested are chemically unlike the whole cloth. It was probably a mixture of older threads and newer threads woven into the cloth as part of a medieval repair. Recent robust statistical studies add weight to this theory. Philip Ball, the former physical science editor for Nature when the carbon dating results were published, recently wrote: “It’s fair to say that, despite the seemingly definitive tests in 1988, the status of the Shroud of Turin is murkier than ever.” If we wish to be scientific we must admit we do not know how old the cloth is. But if the newer thread is about half of what was tested – and some evidence suggests that – it is possible that the cloth is from the time of Christ.

No one has a good idea how front and back images of a crucified man came to be on the cloth. Yes, it is possible to create images that look similar. But no one has created images that match the chemistry, peculiar superficiality and profoundly mysterious three-dimensional information content of the images on the Shroud. Again, this is all published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

We simply do not have enough reliable information to arrive at a scientifically rigorous conclusion. Years ago, as a skeptic of the Shroud, I came to realize that while I might believe it was a fake, I could not know so from the facts. Now, as someone who believes it is the real burial shroud of Jesus of Nazareth, I similarly realize that a leap of faith over unanswered questions is essential.

My name is Dan Porter. Please email me at DanielRobertPorter@gmail.com